The Analytics of a Belief in a Future Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ...and phosphates excreted by the urine had increased in a notable manner." the occipital convolutions, while its specific gravity is higher in the latter than in the former positions. (Bastian.) Bundles of fibres described by Lockhart Clarke rise from the central white matter, and passing outward with gradual diminishment of size, lose filaments along their course to contiguous nerve cells, and finally upon the surface become a reticulum of fibres in direct continuity with the thin and vascular membrane which covers the brain. In the convolution layers, nerve elements graduate from a fine grained texture through a smallcelled tract to those with larger cells and with varying shapes, and of these Bevan Lewis, as quoted by Dr. Bastian, says: "It is in the essential character of the individual cells of these layers, in the relationship of these anatomical units, the one to the other, and in their general distribution, that we detect divergence from the type normal to the higher mammalia." The same writer says that peculiar globose cells with few connecting processes are found in the Pig and Sheep, and among men only in the brain of Idiots or Imbeciles. These cells with their latent powers of molecular energy are connected by systems of nerve threads, the commissures of the brain by which areas are brought into united action, the totality of impressions fused into the organic feeling of oneness, and our own conscious identity built up upon the accordant reciprocity and harmony of all the cerebral centres. These commissures of the brain consist in general of, first, the great Corpus Collosum, which unites the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. This is a complex bed of connecting fibres uniting similar convolutions in both hemispheres. Then there is, b...